As you may or may not have heard, this year’s Call of Duty didn’t quite sell as well as expected. Sales are down on both physical and digital sales, meaning that there just weren’t as many people buying it. There are a few reasons I’m not surprised about this, but the biggest is that Call of Duty just isn’t changing enough at the moment. In recent years, the developers haven’t been innovating on what the games do, and I think it’s finally hitting home with fans that it’s not actually a good deal to buy the games every year.
Call of Duty is now always made up of the core campaign, multiplayer, and zombies mode. These are the three things you can expect to get out of the yearly Call of Duty machine. They’re the same old thing, but there’s a fresh coat of paint. In fairness, there are occasionally some new mechanics in the modes, but they’re few and far between. In all honesty, there’s not much going on that’s new apart from the setting. This is something that stopped me from buying the games a while back, but I think it’s taken a while for everyone else to catch up.
The other side of this is Warzone. It’s a free-to-play title that updates with the new releases, and you only get a couple of new things out of it if you don’t own the new Call of Duty game. This is still the game that most people play regularly though, and I see no reason for anyone to change their habits on this anytime soon. In fact, I think they’ll just stick with the free-to-play mode, and that’ll be that.
Finally, we also have Battlefield 2042. This game is out this week and it’s huge and better than Call of Duty. It’s got more going on, more to explore, and it’s fresh. Call of Duty just doesn’t have enough that’s new to offer, and that’s why sales are slipping. However, I also think that this is a reflection of the issues Activision Blizzard is experiencing, and a demonstration of fan buying power at work.